The Turkish newspaper Taraf has once again published documents alleging a coup plot by the Turkish military to topple Turkey's AK Party government. According to Taraf, this plot (supposedly called 'Balyoz,' or 'sledgehammer') was developed in 2003, just one year after the AK Party came to power. 

I've written about Taraf before on this blog. As I wrote in my earlier post, in a very short period of time Taraf has become very influential among foreign media correspondents covering Turkey, and the paper has become well-known for publishing sensational allegations pertaining to the Turkish military's supposed determination to overthrow the Turkish government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. 

While Taraf has often been lauded in the foreign media for its presumed courage in taking on the Turkish military, the newspaper's allegations regarding the supposed plans of the generals (and hundreds of others!) also need to be read in the context of the ongoing Ergenekon investigation. The Ergenekon investigation, of course, originally began as an inquiry into state-sponsored death squads but has since been almost entirely transformed into a search for anti-AK Party coup plotters. This radical shift in the investigation—which curiously has almost entirely supplanted the original focus on state-sponsored death squads rather than being conducted in parallel to the original investigation—has implicated a wide range of civilian figures, including journalists, academics, and NGO figures critical of the AK Party and its policies of greater tolerance towards the public display of Islamic piety in Turkey. Meanwhile, several other figures who have been directly implicated in allegations of state support for death squads (mainly in the southeast of Turkey) remain free. 

Meanwhile, Taraf's editors are obliged to fight off rumors in the Turkish blogosphere that the newspaper is actually a front for supporters of Fetullah Gulen. Gulen is a Muslim religious figure from Turkey who fled to the United States in 1998, apparently in fear of being arrested in the wake of of Turkey's "February 28 process," which had been initiated the previous year in opposition to individuals and organizations considered by Turkey's military leaders to be opposed to the secular nature of the Turkish state. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, who has been officially (and legally!) prevented from discussing her work at the FBI by a gag order, has claimed that Gulen has ties to the CIA. 

Fetullah Gulen

[I should also note that Zaman, another Turkish newspaper with a very user-friendly English-language site, is also widely considered in Turkey to be a front for Gulen. Like Taraf, Zaman has become extremely influential among foreign observers—I won't mention them by name, but readers can often see which sources these people are citing—writing professionally on Turkish politics.] 

So yet another allegation has been made in Taraf, this time concerning an alleged coup plot which took place seven years ago and was never put into effect. Once again, Turkish military leaders deny the charge, and claim that Taraf is out to get them. The Ergenekon investigation continues, but it is now little more than a search for enemies of the AK Party. The original purpose behind the investigation—uncovering crimes committed by the state against its citizens—has been almost entirely forgotten. 

Meanwhile, an important rival of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has been silenced. Aydin Dogan, the media mogul who was hit with a $2.5 billion tax fine last year, resigned from Dogan Holding on January 1 of this year. His resignation fell on the heels of the resignation of Ertugrul Ozkok, longtime editor of the newspaper Hurriyet—one of the most important components of the Dogan media empire. 

What's going on? I don't know exactly—but it does seem clear that an intense battle for power is taking place. Erdogan and the AK Party—who just a couple of years ago narrowly avoided having their party shut down—are perhaps fighting for their political lives. The Ergenekon investigation may very well be a weapon in Erdogan's battle against the Turkish military and a broad swath of individuals who would likely support an anti-AK Party coup, even if they're not actually involved in planning one. 

Taraf, Zaman, the Dogan Group, Sabah-ATV...one thing's for certain, the battle for the media in Turkey is largely tied to the political battles currently taking place along a number of fronts. 

I've written about these connections between the media, politics, and Ergenekon before on this site, and I've already repeated myself too much. Nevertheless, the details keep getting stranger, and the plot keeps getting thicker, so it's hard not to return to these questions—especially when I tend not to be very satisfied with the way these topics are treated in most of the English-language commentary that's out there. 

One thing we can probably all agree on, however, is that we'll probably never get to the absolute bottom of this.